Lanka enews

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On January 7, two gunmen burst into the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing eight journalists and bringing into focus the risks cartoonists face. But with the ability of their work to transcend borders and languages, and to simplify complex political situations, the threats faced by cartoonists around the world—who are being imprisoned, forced into hiding, threatened with legal action or killed—far exceed Islamic extremism. A Committee to Protect Journalists special report by Shawn W. Crispin

The stunning defeat of Sri Lanka's incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa by challenger Maithripala Sirisena on Friday has given way to questions about what changes, if any, will come for press freedom in a country that had grown deeply repressive under the previous leadership.

When I first met Sandhya Eknelygoda in May
2010 in her home outside Colombo, she was a distressed mother of two young
boys whose husband had gone missing. He was last seen four months earlier, just
prior to the elections that returned President Mahinda Rajapaksa to power after
the end of the decades-long war with Tamil secessionists. She still has no
inkling of the whereabouts of her husband Prageeth, a cartoonist and columnist
for the opposition website Lanka eNews (which has since ceased
to operate in Sri Lanka because of arson
attacks and legal harassment
of its staff, but is maintained overseas).

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On Wednesday, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court slammed the door on a
case about the shutdown of four websites that had failed to register with the
government. In handing down its decision, the Court appeared to rule that
freedom of expression in Sri Lanka is not an absolute right and can be
restricted--and you don't need to pass a law to do so. The three-judge panel
told the petitioners who brought the case--Sunil Jayasekara, convener of the
Free Media Movement, and Udaya Kalupathirana, a member of the movement's
executive committee--that they saw no reason for the court to hear any further
arguments.

A couple of weeks ago, I
described the terrible incidence of anti-press abuse that has come each recent
January in Sri Lanka. Media activists have come to call the month "Black
January" for good reason, as this email message details:

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Sri Lanka's former attorney general Mohan Peiris, who is now
the senior legal adviser to the cabinet and who many Sri Lankans say is aiming
to become the next Supreme Court Chief Justice, has made conflicting statements
about missing journalist Prageeth
Eknelygoda. The discrepancies do more than point up the government's
indifference to Eknelygoda's fate and the mental anguish of his wife and two
sons. Peiris's statements highlight the disregard with which the government
views international opinion.

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New York, October 19, 2011--The
Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by reports that access to
anti-government news website Lanka eNews
has been blocked inside Sri Lanka, according to the site's exiled editor and
users inside the country. All three language versions of the site, English, Sinhala, and Tamil, have not been available
since Tuesday.

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A note for the Sri Lanka watchers who visit CPJ.org regularly. Sanjana Hattotuwa, the founder of the citizen
journalism website Groundviews messaged me this morning to say
that the site is up
and running again after suddenly going down within Sri Lanka over the
weekend. Hattotuwa is the driving force behind the site, which is headquartered
at the Center for Policy Alternatives, an
independent Sri Lankan think tank.